1. Field of Invention
The present disclosure is in the field of demographic, psychographic, and behavioral profiling of individuals and locations based on mobile device movement. The present disclosure includes methods of obtaining both individual and location profiles while preserving the privacy of the individuals.
2. Description of Related Art
Advertisers, marketers, and businesses attempt to match their products with the most likely buyers of the product. In order to do this, they use information such as the age, the buying power, the activities, and many other demographic, psychographic, and behavioral information on an individual or a group of individuals to ensure the best target audience for their product.
Traditionally in the US, demographic information has been provided by the US Census. This information attempts to measure many attributes of small geographical areas based on household data. This provides a base level of demographic information related to the persons who live in a given area. Over the years, various methods and information sources have been proposed and used to enhance the accuracy and specificity with which this information can be applied to individuals and groups.
Web sites and online web usage tracking has added a new dimension to the toolbox for these would-be marketers. By utilizing techniques such as browser ‘cookies’, the profile of an online user can be augmented based on their online behavior and the sites that they visit.
As more and more people make use of smart phones and other mobile devices equipped with the capability to determine location, yet another set of identifiable information can be added to the mix. In particular, the time and location of the device itself can be used to estimate many characteristics of that device's user. By determining the demographics of the locations, venues, and times at which these destinations are visited, it is possible to build more detailed estimations of the individual's demographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics (See US 2002/0111172 A1, DeWolf, et al).
At the same time, by analyzing the various device profiles at a given place and time, the class or classes of people that are at a location can be computed. This becomes a demographic profile of that place at a given time.
For the purposes of this disclosure, the term “demographic profile” refers to a set of attributes describing the user of a device (the device demographic profile, or DDP) or the group of people that visit a particular location (the location demographic profile, or LDP). This set of attributes may include, but is not limited to, age, gender, ethnic background, income, years of education, as well as behavioral descriptors, such as “frequent traveler” or “retail shopper”.
Demographic profile data for where people live (the LDP) has been widely available for decades. Direct marketing firms and others have compiled data from public and private sources to build profiles of neighborhoods. Public data sources include the U.S. Census, public record filings about home purchases, and records on public infrastructure such as water systems. Private sources include shipping and purchase records, magazine and newspaper subscriptions, and voluntary surveys.
LDPs are available for nearly every residential block in the U.S. Some vendors of demographic profile information further categorize neighborhoods according to the mix of different behavioral types based on the mix of these attributes—labeling combinations of attributes with names like “urban achievers.” Together these data sources have given marketers a way to target households for various offers by direct mail and telephone, providing vendors an easy way to send their catalogs only to highly educated parents under 45 who live in the suburbs, for example.
While much is known about the LDP of a block of homes, which can be characterized as the static or unchanging demographic profile of a place, it has been discovered that little is known about where the people living there go during the day, which can be characterized as the dynamic or changing LDP. Some companies have surveyed users to determine this information, and extrapolated from these limited samples. This can give some broad general understanding of where some people work during the day, but cannot resolve how the LDP changes during the day, or over the course of a week, for example. Commercial and urban areas in particular, where the demographic mix changes significantly with time of day or day of week, cannot be described by current demographic profile data sources. Companies evaluating these areas for retail expansion or outdoor advertising have very little information on which to base large financial commitments.
User demographic profiles, not associated with one's home, are frequently collected using purchasing and shipping records, web browsing histories, and other records related to computer usage. An example of this is the user profile data collected in web browser “cookies”, which are special files many web sites use to store information about users based on pages they have visited. These files are stored on the user's computer and submitted to the site with every page request or view. Online user demographic profiles are generally computed without considering their location or their current activity.